The Fall of Adam and Eve. St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod. XIX century.
1) personal transgression by our forefathers of the will of God in their failure to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; 2) the law of sinful disorder, which has entered human nature as a consequence of this crime. When we talk about the heredity of original sin, we do not mean the crime of our first parents, for which they alone are responsible, but the law of sinful disorder that struck human nature as a result of the fall of our first parents.
image of the fall of our first parents
Moses describes how the fall of our first parents happened. Having spoken about the blessed dwelling of the first man, about the commandment given to him by God in paradise, about the naming of animals by Adam, about the creation of a helper for him by God and about their innocent state, the sacred Writer of Genesis continues:
The serpent is the wisest of all the beasts that exist on earth, which the Lord God created. And the serpent said to the woman: What did God say: Do not eat from every tree of paradise? And the woman said to the serpent: We will eat from every tree of paradise: but from the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of paradise, God said, let us not eat from it, but touch it, so that we will not die. And the serpent said to the woman: You will not die by death: for God knows that if one day you take away from him, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like a god, knowing good and evil. And the wife saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasing to the eye and that it was red, and you understood: and she took the poison from its fruit, and gave it to her husband with her, and the poison.
From this description it is clear that -
1. The first cause of the fall of our first parents, or the cause of their fall, was the serpent. Who is meant here by the name of the serpent? Moses calls him “the wisest of all the beasts that are on the earth”; therefore, it is classified among the terrestrial animals. But judging by what this serpent says, reasons, slanderes God, tries to entice Eve to evil, we see that here in the natural serpent hides a spiritual serpent, the devil, the enemy of God. And the Holy Scripture leaves no doubt about that. The Wise One says that “through envy of the devil, death (and sin) comes into the world” (Wis. 2:24); The Savior Himself calls the devil “a murderer from time immemorial” and “the father of lies,” and all sinners “sons of the devil” (John 8:44); finally, St. John the Theologian testifies twice and with all clarity that “the great serpent, the ancient serpent is,” namely, “the devil and Satan, flatter the whole universe” (Apoc. 12:9; 20:2). This is how the Holy Fathers and teachers of the Church constantly looked at the tempter serpent, for example:
A) Irenaeus: “the devil, being a fallen angel, can only do what he did in the beginning, that is, to disturb and entice a person’s mind to transgress the commandments of God and little by little darken his heart”; b) John Chrysostom: “those who follow scripture should know that the words (of the tempter serpent) are the words of the devil, excited to such deception by his own envy, and he used this animal only as a suitable tool (ὀργάνω)”; c) Gregory the Theologian: “through the envy of the devil and through the seduction of the wife, to which she herself was subjected as the weakest, and which she carried out as skillful in persuasion (oh my weakness! For the weakness of the forefather is also my own), the man forgot the commandment given to him and overcome by bitter taste" ; d) Augustine: “the serpent was so called (the most cunning) because of the cunning of the devil, who carried out his deceit in him and through him”; e) John of Damascus: “man is overcome by the envy of the devil; for the envious hater of goodness - the demon, cast down to the ground for exaltation, could not tolerate that we should be worthy of heavenly blessings,” and others.
2. The second cause of the fall of our first parents, the cause in the proper sense, was themselves. The tempter turns to the wife (perhaps because she heard the commandment not from God directly, but from her husband, and therefore could more easily hesitate), and begins his speech by slandering God: “What did God say: do not eat from every tree?” heaven" (Gen. 3:1). Based on this principle alone, notes St. Chrysostom, the wife should have already realized that there is wickedness here, she should have turned away from the serpent, who says the opposite of what God commanded, and turn with a question to the husband for whom she was created. But, due to extreme inattention (άπροσεξίαν), Eve not only did not turn away from the serpent, but also revealed to him the very commandment of God, to her own destruction. And the woman said to the serpent: “We will eat from every tree of paradise: but from the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of paradise, God said, do not eat from it, but touch it, lest you die” (2:3). Then the tempter, with even greater impudence, began to assert the complete opposite of what God said, and tried to make God himself seem like an envious and ill-wisher to people. “And the serpent said to the woman: You will not die by death: for God knows that if you take away the day from him, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like a god, knowing good and evil” (4:5). The more easily the wife could now recognize the evil one and the more strongly she could not believe his words. But she believed the serpent more than her Creator and Master, she was carried away by the dream of becoming equal to God, and after that the triple lust, the root of all lawlessness, was born in her (1 John 2:16): “And the woman saw that a good tree for food (lust of the flesh) and see what you want with your eyes (lust of the eye) and eat it redly, even if you understand (pride of life): and eat its poison from the fruit” (6). This means that although Eve fell through the deception of the devil, she fell not out of necessity, but completely freely: the words of the seducer were not such that they could involuntarily entice her to sin; on the contrary, they contained a lot of things that should have enlightened her and kept her from crimes. How then did Adam fall? Moses is silent about this; but from the words of God the judge to the fallen Adam: “Because you listened to the voice of your wife and you ate from the tree, the only commandment of which you were not to eat, from which you ate” (17), we can conclude that Adam fell as a result of the convictions of his wife and addiction to it, it means that he also fell not out of necessity, but of his own free will. Whatever these beliefs of his wife and Adam’s love for her, he had to remember the commandment of God, had the mind to decide who to obey more, his wife or God, and he himself was guilty of listening to the voice of his wife.
And from this it follows that the blame for the fall of our first parents in no way falls on God. Having created man free, God gave him a commandment, and the easiest one at that, expressed it with all clarity, protected it with terrible threats, gave man all the means to fulfill it (for in addition to the perfection of the natural powers of primordial man, the grace of God constantly dwelt in him) : and man did not want to fulfill the will of his Creator and Benefactor - he listened to the first voice of the tempter... But “why, they ask, did God give Adam this commandment when he foresaw that he would break it?” Because this or that commandment (and it is impossible to think of a simpler one), only a specific commandment, as we have already seen, was necessary for the primordial man to exercise and strengthen his will in goodness, and so that he could earn glory for himself and attain supreme bliss. “Why didn’t God prevent Adam from falling, and the devil tempting him, when he foresaw both?” Because for this He had to restrict their freedom, or even take it away from them; but God, infinitely wise and unchangeable in His determinations, having once granted freedom to any of His creatures, can neither constrain nor take it away again. “Why didn’t God inform man in the very structure of his sinlessness, so that he could not fall, even if he wanted to, in the midst of all temptations?” That’s why, let’s say with Basil the Great, why you don’t recognize servants as good when you keep them tied up, but when you see that they voluntarily perform their duties. Therefore, what pleases God is not what is forced, but what is done virtuously. Virtue comes from will, and not from necessity; and will depends on what is in us; and what is in us is free. Therefore, whoever blames the Creator for not making us sinless by nature does nothing more than prefer the irrational nature to a rational nature, to a nature endowed with will and self-activity, motionless and having no aspirations. “Why did God create us when He knew in advance that we would fall and perish? Wouldn’t it be better if He gave us neither existence nor freedom at all?” But who will dare to unravel the plans of the Infinitely Wise? Who will explain to us that the creation of man, as a sensory-spiritual being, was not necessary in the composition of the universe? And besides, if God foresaw our fall, then He also foresaw our redemption. And at the same time, as He determined to create man who had a mouth, He also predestined to restore the fallen through His only begotten Son. “Not only that, I say, God foresaw,” writes St. Chrysostom - that Adam will sin, but also that He will restore the fallen through economy. And not before did he know about the fall, just as he foresaw the uprising. He knew that he would fall, but he also prepared medicine for the uprising, and allowed man to experience death in order to teach him what he could achieve on his own and what he could use through the goodness of the Creator. Knew that Adam would fall; but he saw that from him would come Abel, Enos, Enoch, Noah, Elijah, prophets, wondrous Apostles, the adornment of nature, and God-bearing clouds of martyrs, exuding piety.”
the importance of the sin of our first parents
The sin of Adam and Eve, which consisted in eating from the fruit of a tree forbidden by God, may seem unimportant. But we will understand its importance and magnitude if we pay attention:
A) Not on appearance, but on the very spirit of the commandment violated by our ancestors. What did this commandment require of them? It was an artificial commandment, not a natural one, i.e. Our ancestors could not themselves, by the voice of the natural law inscribed in their conscience, come to the conclusion that they should not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and explain to themselves why they should not - but they accepted this commandment already externally from God and were obliged to fulfill it only because God commanded so. Consequently, in its spirit, it demanded from them unconditional obedience to God; it was given to test their obedience. This means that by violating it, they fell into the sin of disobedience to God or “disobedience,” as the Apostle puts it (Rom. 5:19), and thus violated the entire moral law, which in general is nothing other than the will of God, and requires from a person only obeys this will. That's why the blessed one said. Augustine: “Let no one think that the sin (of the first people) was small and light because it consisted in eating from the tree, and, moreover, not bad and harmful, but only forbidden - the commandment required obedience, such a virtue that is in a rational creature like the mother and guardian of all virtues." b) The ease of this commandment. “What could be easier than her? - asks St. Chrysostom - God allowed man to live in paradise, to enjoy the beauty of everything visible, to enjoy the fruits of all the trees of paradise, and forbade him to eat only from one thing: and man did not even want to fulfill this... That is why the divine Scripture says: “God is vegetative (in paradise) even from the earth every red tree for vision, and good wood for food" (Genesis 2:9), so that we could know, taking advantage of what abundance, man, through great intemperance and negligence, violated the commandment given to him." c) On incentives to fulfill this commandment. On the one hand, such motives served and should have served for man as the greatest, special benefits to him of the Creator, who created him with my own hands, adorned him with his image, made him king over all earthly beings, placed sweets in paradise, called for communion with Himself, endowed him with immortality in soul and body, destined him for eternal bliss - and for all these mercies he demanded from the recipient only one obedience. And on the other hand, there are terrible threats for violating the commandment: “If you take away a day from him, you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Is it possible to come up with stronger motives, and, moreover, for the fulfillment of such an easy commandment? d) For the means to carry it out. We must remember that Adam and Eve were still completely pure and innocent, with fresh, strong strength, undamaged by sin, and that, in addition, the omnipotent grace of God constantly dwelt in our first parents. Consequently, they only had to want to resist the seducer and stand in goodness, and they would have stood: everything depended on their will alone, and they had plenty of strength. e) The number of private sins contained in the sin of the ancestors. Here were: a) pride: because the ancestors were first of all carried away by the promise of the serpent: “you will be like gods”; b) unbelief: because they did not believe the words of God: “you will die the death”; c) apostasy from God and going over to the side of His enemy, the devil: because they did not obey God, they obeyed the seducer, and believed his daring slander, as if God, out of envy or ill will, forbade them to eat from a certain tree; d) The greatest ingratitude to God for all His extraordinary mercies and bounties. Or let's say in the words blessed. Augustine: “Here comes pride: because man wanted to be in his own power rather than in God’s; and desecration of the shrine: because he did not believe God; and murder: because he exposed himself to death; and spiritual fornication: because integrity human soul violated by the serpent's conviction; and Tatba: because he used a forbidden tree; and covetousness: because he desired more than he should have been content with.” And Tertullian saw the violation of the first commandment by our ancestors as a violation of the entire Decalogue. f) Finally, on the consequences that occurred from the sin of our first parents. If this sin had not been great, it would not have produced the terrible consequences that arose from it; and God, the righteous judge, would not have subjected our first parents to such punishment. “The commandment of God,” says the blessed one. Augustine, it was only forbidden to eat from the tree, and therefore the sin seems light; but how great He who cannot make mistakes considered him is quite evident from the severity of the punishment.”
consequences of the fall of our first parents
These consequences first of all were revealed in the soul of the first parents, then spread to the body and to their entire external well-being.
Consequences in the soul: this is -
2) Darkening of the mind (right. Confession, part 1, answer to questions 23, 27). This was revealed immediately after the fall of Adam and Eve, when they, having heard “the voice of the Lord God walking into paradise at noon,” thought to hide from it between the trees of paradise (Gen. 3:8). “There is nothing worse than sin,” notes St. Chrysostom; Having entered into us, it (sin) not only fills us with shame, but also makes people mad, who were previously reasonable and distinguished by great wisdom. Look how unreasonably he is now acting, who until now was distinguished by so much wisdom, who in fact showed the wisdom bestowed upon him, and even prophesied... How much madness is there in the fact that they are trying to hide from the omnipresent God, from the Creator, Who created everything from nothing, Who knows the innermost, “he created the hearts of people in one place, he understands all their deeds” (Ps. 32:15), “tests the hearts and bellies” (Ps. 7:10), knows the most secret movements of the heart”!
3) Loss of innocence, degradation of the will and its inclination more towards evil than towards good (right Confession, part 1, answer to questions 23, 27). This is evident: a) from the fact that as soon as the first parents sinned, “the eyes of both were opened, and they understood, as if the Nazis were besha” (Gen. 3:7), which they had not noticed before; b) from the fact that, instead of the former filial love, they suddenly felt slavish fear towards God, their Father, their Benefactor: “And the Lord God called Adam and said to him: Adam, where art thou; and I said to him: I heard the voice of You walking into paradise, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself” (9:10); c) finally, because, while giving an account to God of their sin, they decided to bring a crafty excuse instead of repentance. Adam laid the blame on his wife and even on God, who gave her: “And Adam said: woman, even as you gave with me, you gave me from the tree, and I died” (12); and the wife laid the blame on the serpent: “And the woman said: The serpent deceived me, and I was poisoned” (13). The Holy Fathers and teachers of the Church expressed that Adam, through the fall, lost the robe of holiness, became evil, deviated into vicious thoughts, and that the devil established the law of sin in his nature. We find such expressions, for example: a) in Irenaeus: “and Adam said: through disobedience I lost the robe of holiness that I had from the Holy Spirit”; b) from Basil the Great: “Adam soon became outside of paradise, outside of this blessed life, becoming evil not out of necessity, but out of recklessness”; c) from Athanasius the Great: “having transgressed the commandment of God, Adam fell into sinful thoughts, not because God created these thoughts that ensnared us, but because the devil sowed them with deception in the rational nature of man, which fell into crime and moved away from God, so that the devil established in human nature both the law of sin and death, which reigns through sin.”
4) Distortion of the image of God. If the image of God is inscribed in the human soul and primarily in its powers, mind and free will, and these powers have lost a lot of perfection and were distorted through the sin of Adam, then the image of God in man has been distorted along with them. This idea is affirmed by: a) Basil the Great: “man was created in the image and likeness of God; but sin distorted (ήχρείωσεν) the beauty of the image, drawing the soul into passionate desires”; b) Macarius the Great: “if a coin containing the image of kings is damaged; then the gold loses its value, and the image is of no use: Adam experienced the same thing”; c) Theodoret: “Adam, desiring to be God, also destroyed being the image of God.”
Effects on the body:
1) Illness, sorrow, exhaustion (last Eastern Patr. On the Orthodox Faith, part 6). Having damaged all the powers of the soul, the sin of the forefathers, as an unnatural action, inevitably produced a similar disorder in their body, introducing into it the seeds of all kinds of diseases, fatigue in labor, relaxation and suffering. “And God said to the woman: I will multiply and multiply your sorrows and your sighs: in pain you will give birth to children” (Gen. 3:16). “And he said to Adam: Because you listened to the voice of your wife and you ate from the tree of which you were commanded not to eat this one thing, from it you ate: cursed is the earth for your deeds, bear it in sorrow all the days of your life” (Genesis 3: 17). “By the sweat of your brow you shall bear your bread” (19). All this was recognized as the consequences of ancestral sin by the teachers of the Church, for example: a) Theophilus of Antioch: “from sin, as if from a source, illness, sorrow, suffering were poured out on man”; b) Irenaeus: “in condemnation for sin, the man accepted sorrows and earthly labor, and to eat bread by the sweat of his face...; equally, the wife accepted sorrows and labors, and sighs, and the pain of birth ... "
2. Death (Space. Chronicle catech., about part 3, p. 43). “By the sweat of your brow,” God said to Adam, “take away your bread until you return to the land from which you were taken: as you are the earth, you will return to the earth” (Genesis 3:19). Physical death became a necessary consequence of the Fall of our ancestors, on the one hand, because sin brought into their bodies the destructive principle of illness and exhaustion; and on the other hand, because God removed them from the tree of life forever after the fall: “and God said: Behold, Adam was one of us, knowing good and evil: and now, lest he stretch out his hand and take away from the tree he will take away his life, and will live forever" (22). This is how the Holy Fathers and teachers of the Church looked at death, in particular: a) Ambrose: “the cause of death was disobedience, and therefore man himself is to blame for his death, and not God is the culprit his death" ; b) John Chrysostom: “although the forefathers still lived for many years, but as soon as they heard: “you are earth, and you will go to earth,” they accepted the sentence of death - they became mortal, and from then on, one could say that they died ; To designate this, it is said in Scripture: “If you take away a day from it, you will die,” that is, you will hear the sentence that from now on you are already mortal”; c) Blessed Augustine: “among Christians who hold the true Catholic faith, it is recognized beyond doubt that even bodily death itself befell us not according to the law of nature: because God did not create death for man, but as a result of sin.”
Consequences in relation to the external state of a person:
1. His expulsion from paradise. Paradise was a blessed abode for innocent man, and was prepared for him solely by the infinite goodness of the Creator; now, when man has sinned and angered his Lord and Benefactor, the guilty person has become unworthy of such a dwelling and is rightly expelled from paradise: “and the Lord God drove him out of paradise to make the sweet earth from which it was taken” (Gen. 3:23), - thought , which was very often repeated by the teachers of the Church.
2. Loss or reduction of power over animals (Reg. Ex. Part 1, answer to question 22). This power was based on the fact that man was created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26); Consequently, as soon as the image of God became darkened in man through sin, his power over animals was bound to weaken. “Look,” says St. Chrysostom, while Adam had not yet sinned, the animals were slaves and submissive to him, and he, like slaves, gave them names; but when he desecrated his appearance with sin, then the animals did not recognize him, and the slaves became his enemies... While Adam kept his appearance pure, created in the image of God, the animals obeyed him as servants; but when he darkened this appearance with disobedience, they, not recognizing their master, hated him as a stranger.” “However, the same teacher adds in another place, although Adam violated the entire commandment and transgressed the entire law, God did not deprive him of all honor and did not take away all power from him, but removed from his command only those animals that were not very suitable for him. needs of life; and those who are necessary and useful and can serve us a lot in life, he left all of them in our service.”
3. The curse of the earth in the deeds of man: “Cursed is the earth in your deeds... thorns and thistles will grow for you” (Gen. 2:17-18). “And this curse is just,” notes St. Chrysostom, for just as the earth was created for man so that he could enjoy everything that comes from it, so now for the sake of man who has sinned it is given over to a curse, so that its curse would harm the well-being and peace of man.” From the words of the Genesis Writer we can conclude that this curse primarily concerns the fruitfulness of the earth: “thorns and thistles will grow for you”; but the Apostle extends his curse much further: “To vanity,” he says, “the creature obeys not by will, but for the sake of him who obeyed; We know that all creation (with us) sighs and mourns even to this day” (Rom. 8:20-22). What this vanity actually consists of, which the creation obeyed as a result of the fall of man, we cannot determine with accuracy.
the transition of the sin of the first parents to the human race: preliminary remarks
The sin committed by our forefathers in paradise, with all its consequences, passed from them to all their offspring, and is known in the language of the Church under the name of original or ancestral sin (Right. Confession, part 1, answer to question 24).
1. The doctrine of original sin, which spread from Adam and Eve to the entire human race, is extremely important in Christianity. If there is no original sin in people and their nature is not damaged, if they are born pure and innocent before God, as the first man came from the hands of the Creator, then redemption is not necessary for them; The Son of God came to earth in vain and tasted death, and the Christian Faith is undermined at its very foundations. That is why the blessed one argued. Augustine that the sin of Adam and the redemption accomplished by Christ the Savior are, as it were, the two centers around which all Christian teaching revolves.
2. In its teaching on original sin, the Orthodox Church distinguishes, firstly, from sin itself, and secondly, from its consequences in us. By the name of original sin, she actually means that crime of the commandment of God, that deviation of human nature from the law of God, and therefore from its goals, which was committed by our forefathers in paradise and from them passed on to us all. “Original sin, we read in the Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Church Eastern, is a crime of the law of God given in paradise to the progenitor Adam. This ancestral sin passed from Adam into all human nature, since we were all then in Adam, and thus, through Adam alone, sin spread to all of us. Therefore, we are conceived and born with this sin” (part 3, answer to question 20). The only difference is that in Adam this deviation from the law of God and, therefore, from its destiny was free, voluntary, but in us it is hereditary, necessary - with a nature that has deviated from the law of God, we are born; in Adam it was personal sin, sin in the strict sense of the word - in us it is not personal sin, it is not actually sin, but is only the sinfulness of nature that we receive from our parents; Adam sinned, i.e. freely violated the commandment of God, and thereby became a sinner, i.e. turned his entire nature away from the law of God - and we personally did not sin with Adam, but became sinners in him and through him (“by the disobedience of one man there were many sinners” Rom. 5:19), receiving from him a sinful nature, and we are light "by nature the children of wrath" of God (Eph. 2:3). In short, under the name of ancestral sin in the ancestors themselves we mean their sin, and at the same time the sinful state of nature with which and in which we are born. This concept is inspired by the Orthodox Church when it says in its confession: “since all people were in a state of innocence in Adam; then as soon as he sinned, everyone sinned in him and became in a state of sin” (Part 1, answer to question 24).
By the consequences of original sin, the Church understands the very consequences that the sin of our forefathers produced directly in them, and which passes from them to us, such as: darkness of the mind, degradation of the will and its inclination to evil, bodily illnesses, death and others. “And the burden and consequence of the fall, they say Eastern Patriarchs in his message about Orthodox faith, we call not sin itself... but the inclination to sin, and those disasters with which Divine justice punished a person for his disobedience, such as: exhausting labor, sorrow, bodily infirmities, birth illnesses, difficult life for some time on the earth of wandering, and finally bodily death" (Part 6). “Although the will of man, as is also said in the Orthodox Confession, is damaged by original sin, yet even now it is in the will of every person to be good and a child of God, or evil and the son of the devil” (Part 1, answer to the question .27); and here there is damage to the will, i.e. its inclination towards evil differs from original sin and is recognized as its consequence in us.
This distinction between original sin and its consequences must be firmly remembered, especially in certain cases, in order to correctly understand the teaching of the Orthodox Church. For example, the Church teaches that baptism blots out, destroys in us original sin: this means that it cleanses the actual sinfulness of our nature, inherited by us from our ancestors; that through baptism we come out of a sinful state, we cease to be by nature children of the wrath of God, i.e. guilty before God, we become completely pure and innocent before Him, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, as a result of the merits of our Redeemer; but it does not mean that baptism destroys in us the very consequences of original sin: inclination to evil more than to good, illness, death and others - because all these designated consequences remain, as experience and the Word of God testify (Rom. 7:23 ), and in reborn people.
3. However, sometimes original sin is taken in a broad sense, when, for example, the doctrine of the reality of this sin, its universality, is expounded. And it is precisely under the name of original sin that we mean both sin itself and its consequences in us: the damage to all our powers, our inclination more towards evil than towards good, and others. This is because in the Holy Scripture itself the doctrine of original sin and its consequences is set forth, for the most part, inseparably; and on the other hand, because when the reality of original sin, or its universality, is proven, then at the same time the reality or universality of its consequences is also proven.
4. There are two known false teachings regarding original sin. One is those who completely reject the reality of this sin, saying that everyone is born as pure and innocent as Adam was created, and that illness and death are natural consequences of human nature, and not consequences of original sin - this is what the Pelagians taught in ancient times. and in modern times the Socinians and rationalists in general teach. Another teaching is that of the Reformed, who go to the opposite extreme, too exaggerating in us the consequences of original sin: according to this teaching, ancestral sin completely destroyed freedom, the image of God and all spiritual powers in man, so that the very nature of man became sin, everything that wishes that whatever a person does is sin, his very virtues are sins, and he is absolutely incapable of anything good. The Orthodox Church rejects the first of these false opinions with its teaching about the reality of original sin in us with all its consequences (i.e., original sin understood in the broad sense); the latter is rejected by its teaching about these consequences.
the reality of original sin, its universality and mode of distribution
The ancestral sin, the Orthodox Church teaches, with its consequences spread from Adam and Eve to all their descendants through their natural birth, and therefore undoubtedly exists.
I) This doctrine has solid foundations in Holy Scripture. The passages of Scripture related here can be divided into two classes: some express primarily the idea of the reality and universality of original sin in people; and others are predominantly the thought of reality and the method of its distribution.
From places of the first kind:
1. The most important and clear thing is in the fifth chapter of the letter of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Romans. Making a comparison here between Adam and the Lord Jesus Christ in relation to their relationship to the human race, the Apostle writes among other things: “one man sin came into the world, and death came into the world through sin, and so death came to all men, in whom all sinned” (12). “Even though many died through the sin of one, the grace of God and the gift of the grace of one man Jesus Christ abound in many more” (15). “If through one sin the death of the kingdom is one, and the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness are accepted, the one Jesus Christ will reign in life. In the same way, just as one sin brought condemnation to all men, so also one single justification brought justification of life to all men. For by the disobedience of one man sins were many, and by the obedience of one righteous man there would be many” (17-19). From these words it is clear: a) that sin entered the world, and through sin death also entered, as a consequence of it, through the one man Adam: “let us unite (δι' ένός) man sin into the world of avnida and sins (διά τής άμαρτίας) death” ; b) that it was through the sin of one that death entered all people, and not through their own sins: “and thus (οϋτως) death came to all men... by the sin of one, many died... by one sin, the death of the kingdom is one (διά τοϋ ένός )"; c) that along with death, which is a consequence of sin, sin entered into all mankind, and that it was through this sin, before their own, that people became sinners: “in it all have sinned”; “by disobedience (διά τής παρακοής) of one man the sins were (κατεστάθησαν - became, became) many”; d) finally, that it was through the sin of one that entered all people before they began to sin themselves, and another consequence of sin is condemnation: “by sin alone (δι’ ένός) came condemnation into all people.” Consequently, those who reject the spread of original sin from the first parents to the entire human race are unfair when they say that such a meaning lies in the words of the Apostle in question. “Adam sinned first and therefore died; all other people sin according to his example, and therefore die as a result of their own sins - and, therefore, Adam’s sin entered the world only through imitation, and is not communicated to people through birth.” In addition to the comments we have presented, which clearly refute such an interpretation, we will make some more: a) The Apostle, as if to protect against this interpretation, deliberately said in the same chapter of the Epistle to the Romans: “kingly death from Adam even to Moses and on those who have not sinned in the likeness of the crime Adamov" (14); b) according to the word of the Apostle, through sin, death spread to all people, and indeed all people die, even infants; but infants have no sins of their own, and cannot sin like Adam; c) “if the Apostle, let us quote the words of the blessed one. Augustine, had the intention of speaking about the sin of imitation, he would rather say, following the Savior (John 8:41-44), that through an angel sin entered the world, because the angel sinned first”; d) “many sin by deed, not at all thinking about Adam’s sin: how then does Adam’s sin serve them to their detriment by its example?” ; e) The Apostle expresses that through one, i.e. man, “sin came into the world below” (έισήλθεν), i.e., that this sin did not remain at its source, but spread, passed from it to all people, that the first sinner gave birth to sinners subject to death. The same thought as in the passage considered is contained in the words of the Apostle: “Just as in Adam (έν τώ Άδάμ) all die, so in Christ all will live” (1 Cor. 15:22). If all people die in Adam, it means they die the same death with him, which occurred as a result of his sin.
2. Another, less clear one is found in the book of Job. Feigning disaster human life, the holy man says among other things: “Whoever will be clean from filth, even if he lives only one day on earth” (Job 14:4-5). Here, obviously, we are talking about some kind of defilement, from which no one is free, and, moreover, from birth. What kind of filth is this? Since, according to Job’s description, it is the cause of the disasters of human life (vv. 1-2), and makes a person guilty of the judgment of God (3), then we must assume that what is meant here is moral defilement, and not physical, which is already a consequence moral, and cannot in itself make a person guilty before God - the sinfulness of our nature is understood, passing on to everyone from our forefathers.
Places of the second type include:
1. The words of the Savior in His conversation with Nicodemus: “Amen, amen, I say to you: unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:5-6). The meaning of these words is that a person born naturally Whoever he is, Jew or pagan, cannot in any way enter the Kingdom of God, the kingdom of grace and then the kingdom of glory, unless he is reborn from above in the sacrament of baptism. This means - a) all people, by their very nature, are now subject to some kind of impurity, and moral impurity, because it serves as an obstacle for them to enter the moral kingdom of Christ; and - b) this uncleanness extends to all people through their natural birth. To explain this passage, we can recall the words of the Apostle that we are “by nature children of the wrath of God” (Eph. 2:3).
2. The saying of the Psalmist in his penitential psalm: “Behold, I was conceived in iniquity, and in sins did my mother give birth to me (Ps. 50:7), and as from the Hebrew: “in iniquity... in sin...” Here it is impossible to understand the personal sin of the prophet king, because in this sin, he says, I was conceived and born; this sin, therefore, was inherent in him from a time when he did not yet have personal activity. It is also impossible to understand the sin of David’s parents, that is, as if he was conceived and born by them lawlessly - it is known that David was not the fruit of a crime, that Jesse, his father, shone with the life of a righteous man, and his mother was the legal wife of Jesse. Therefore, nothing else should be understood under the name of iniquity, in which David was conceived and born, as that sin, which, born from the first disobedience of Adam, is passed on from Adam to all his descendants. Natural law conception and birth are the same for all people; therefore, it is impossible to give reasons why only one king of Israel would be conceived and born in ancestral sin, and all other people would be free from it.
II. Having such solid foundations in the Holy Scriptures, the dogma of original sin has no less solid foundations in the Holy Tradition. Evidence of this legend is:
1. The custom of the Church to baptize infants, which has existed in it since the time of the Apostles themselves, as testified by ancient teachers: Irenaeus, Origen, Cyprian and many others. And she always performed this baptism according to the testimony of the same teachers and her symbols: “for the remission of sins.” What kind of sins are there when babies cannot yet sin on their own? “Infants,” Origen said, are baptized for the remission of sins. What sins? Or when they sinned? And how can they need a baptismal font, if not in the sense about which we just said: “no one will be clean from filth, even if he lives on earth for one day”? And since through this sacrament of baptism the impurities of birth are cleansed, infants are also baptized.” That's why blessed. Augustine boldly points the Pelagians to infant baptism in support of the idea that the Church has always recognized the reality of ancestral sin in people. It must be added that during the baptism of infants, as well as adults, the Church has since ancient times used spells to drive away from the newly baptized “every evil and unclean spirit hidden and nesting in his heart.” What would these spells mean if the Church considered babies pure and not involved in ancestral sin? And the Pelagians themselves did not reject the antiquity of these spells.
2. Councils that took place in the fifth century on the occasion of the Pelagian heresy. It is known that from 412 to 431 in different places Christendom, and in the east, and especially in the west, there were more than twenty councils that considered the said heresy, and all unanimously anathematized it. The acts of all these councils are printed in Collect. Concil. T. I, ed. Harduin.. How can such a unanimous rebellion against the Pelagian error be explained if the doctrine of original sin had not been widespread and deeply rooted in the Church of Christ since the time of the Apostles themselves? It would be superfluous to cite the definitions of all these councils against the Pelagians; it is enough to quote the words of the most important of them, Carthaginian (418), accepted Orthodox Church among nine local ones. “Whoever rejects the need for the baptism of small children and newborns from the mother’s womb, or says that although they are baptized for the remission of sins, they do not borrow anything from the ancestral Adam’s sin that should be washed in the bath of rebirth (from which it would follow that the image of baptism in remission of sins is used over them not in the true, but in a false meaning), he shall be anathema. For what was said by the Apostle: “by one man sin came into the world, and death came into the world through sin, and so death came to all men, in whom all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12), should be understood in no other way than what the Catholic Church, scattered everywhere, has always understood and widespread. For according to this rule of faith, even infants, who cannot commit any sins of their own accord, are truly baptized for the remission of sins, so that through regeneration, what they took from the old birth may be cleansed in them.”
3. Sayings of private teachers of the Church who lived before the appearance of the Pelagian heresy, such as: a) Justin: “(Christ) blessed to be born and to taste death, not because He Himself needed it, but for the sake of the human race, which through Adam (άπό τοϋ Άδαμ) was subjected to death and the temptation of the serpent"; b) Irenaeus: “in the first Adam we offended God by not fulfilling His commandments; in the second Adam they were reconciled to Him, becoming submissive even to death; We were not debtors to anyone else, but to Him whose commandment we violated from the beginning”; c) Tertullian: “from the beginning man is deceived by the devil in order to violate the commandment of God, and therefore is put to death; after that, the entire human race, descending from his seed, became involved (traducem) in its condemnation”; d) Cyprian: “if even great sinners who have previously sinned greatly against God, when they believe, are granted remission of sins and baptism and grace are not forbidden to anyone, much less should this be forbidden for a baby who, having barely been born, has sinned in nothing , besides that, having come from the flesh of Adam, he received (contraxit) the infection of ancient death through his very birth, and who proceeds to accept absolution all the more conveniently because he is absolved not of his own, but of other people’s sins”; e) Hilaria: “In the error of one Adam, the entire human race went astray... from one, the sentence of death and the work of life spread to everyone”; f) Basil the Great: “resolve the original sin by giving food - for just as Adam passed on sin to us through evil eating, so we will blot out this evil eating if we satisfy our brother’s need and hunger”; g) Gregory the Theologian: “this newly implanted sin came to unfortunate people from the progenitor... all of us who participated in the same Adam were deceived by the serpent, and killed by sin, and saved by the heavenly Adam”; h) Ambrose: “we all sinned in the first man, and through the succession of nature the succession spread from one to all in sin... so Adam is in each of us: human nature sinned in him, because through one sin passed into all.” ; i) John Chrysostom: “How did death enter and reign? Through the sin of one: for what else does it mean: “all have sinned in it”? After his (Adam’s) fall, those who did not eat of the tree all became mortal from that time on... this sin caused common death.”
We do not cite similar sayings of many other teachers of the Church who lived during the same period; and those cited are absolutely enough to see all the recklessness of the Pelagians, ancient and new, who claim that Augustine invented the doctrine of original sin, and in order, on the other hand, to realize all the justice of the words of the blessed. Augustine to one of the Pelagians: “I did not invent original sin, in which the Catholic faith has believed from ancient times; but you, who reject this dogma, are without a doubt a new heretic.”
III. Finally, we can be convinced of the reality of original sin, which is passed on to all of us from our forefathers, in the light of sound reason, on the basis of undoubted experience.
1. Who with full attention enters and goes deep into himself, he cannot help but say with the holy Apostle Paul: “For I know that good things do not live in me, that is, in my flesh; It’s not because I want good that I do it, but because I don’t want evil, I do it. Even if I don’t want to, I do this, it is no longer I who do this, but sin that lives within me. I have now acquired the law, so that I want to do good, as evil is due to me. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man: for I see another law in my heart, warring against the law of my mind, and taking me captive by the law of sin which is in my heart” (Rom. 7:18-23). In particular, those who carefully observe themselves and their neighbors cannot fail to recognize the following truths: a) in us there is a constant struggle between spirit and flesh, reason and passions, aspirations for good and attractions for evil; b) in this struggle, victory almost always remains on the side of the latter: the flesh prevails in us over the spirit, passions dominate the mind, attractions to evil overpower desires for good; We love goodness by nature, we desire it, we enjoy it, but in order to do good we do not find the strength within ourselves; We do not love evil by nature, and yet we are drawn to it uncontrollably; c) the habit of everything good and holy is acquired by us with great effort and very slowly; and the habit of evil is acquired without the slightest effort and extremely quickly - and vice versa - d) it is extremely difficult for us to wean ourselves from any vice, to conquer any passion in ourselves, sometimes the most insignificant; and in order to change the virtues that we have acquired through many exploits, some unimportant temptation is enough for this. The same predominance of evil over good in the human race, which we now notice, has been noticed at all times in others. Moses writes about the antediluvian people: “Everyone sets his mind diligently on evil all the days” (Gen. 6:5), and then about the people after the flood: “A man diligently thinks evil from his youth” (Gen. 8: 21). David testifies that “everyone has turned away, and has become without a clue: he did not do goodness, not even one” (Ps. 13:3; demolished 25:4). Solomon says that “there is no righteous man on earth, who does good and does not sin” (Eccl. 7:20); that the righteous also fall sevenfold in a day (Prov. 24:16). The writings of the Prophets are generally filled with complaints and reproaches against the iniquities of the people of their time. The apostles preached that “the whole world lies in evil” (1 John 5:19); that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). The pagan sages themselves complained that the entire human race was corrupted, and that some irresistible inclination innate to man was drawing him to evil. Where does this disorder in human nature come from? Where does this unnatural struggle of forces and aspirations come from, this unnatural predominance of flesh over spirit, passions over reason, this unnatural inclination towards evil, overpowering the natural inclination towards good?
2. All the explanations that people have come up with for this are unfounded, or even unreasonable; the only explanation, completely satisfactory, is the one offered by Revelation with its teaching about the hereditary sin of the first parents. AND -
a) It is impossible to accept the opinion of the ancients that the source of all the evil that exists in a person lies in his body, that the substance in which the spirit of a person is clothed, by its very nature opposes all his spiritual aspirations, darkens his mind, produces disorder in his will and heart, and from errors inevitably leads to vices. This opinion, firstly, leads to the most disastrous consequences, contradicting common sense. If matter is the source of sin, then the author of sin is God; because He is the Creator of matter, He created our body, as well as our soul, and connected them together. This means that we are not subject to any responsibility, we are innocent when we do evil, because we act in accordance with the nature that God gave us. This means that there is no difference between good and evil, and the moral law should not have any meaning for us. Secondly, this opinion contradicts experience, without explaining anything. If indeed the spirit and the flesh in us are at war with each other by their very nature; if then, just as the spirit naturally attracts us to good, the flesh also naturally attracts us to evil: then why is it not the spirit in us that is stronger than the flesh, but precisely the flesh? stronger spirit, - meanwhile, how natural would it be to expect the opposite? Why, according to the general consciousness, does the attraction to evil in us prevail over the attraction to good, so that “if we do not want good, we do this, but if we do not want evil, we do this” (Rom. 7:19)? Why, at least, are the attraction to good and the attraction to evil unequal in us? On the other hand, although it is true that some passions and vices have a basis in our bodily organization, for example, anger, to which people of choleric temperament are especially susceptible, and the like: for that there are other passions and vices, such as self-love, pride, envy, ambition, which cannot be produced from temperament, which originates and develops directly in the soul, and therefore finds its root in it, and not at all in the body.
b) The opinion of some of the newest thinkers is unfair that evil in man is an inevitable consequence of his limitations. “Man, they say, is limited by nature, and a limited being is necessarily imperfect; From imperfections in all of a person’s abilities come his errors, and from errors naturally evil is born.” True, every limited being is imperfect in comparison with another less limited being, and all limited beings are imperfect in comparison with the infinite Being; but this does not mean that every limited being is imperfect in itself, as if it is insufficient for its purpose, as if it is incapable of fulfilling the laws to which its nature is subject. Thus, both angels are limited and imperfect in comparison with God, however, nevertheless, they are perfect in their own rank, each in their place, they are sinless, because they fulfill their destiny, fulfill the moral law to the extent that they can perform according to your limitations; because they love their Creator with all the power of love given to them. In the same way, man, although even more limited and more imperfect in comparison with God than the angels, could remain perfect in his own order in relation to his destiny, could fulfill moral commandments to the extent of his limitations, could love God with all with your human being; could occupy a lower degree of holiness compared to the angels, but despite this, remain innocent before God and sinless. To be imperfect means to have qualities less high than another being placed higher on the ladder of existence; but to be a sinner means, through the abuse of freedom, to violate those relationships that should exist between the Creator and a rational creature, it means to arbitrarily deviate from the path of the Divine commandments and go against one’s own purpose. God does not require from us such virtues that would be beyond our strength; does not oblige us to holiness, which is inaccessible to our nature; It requires only what is completely natural to us and what we can do in our own strength. And if so: then it’s a violation of the law God's man can no longer be considered a simple consequence of his limitations and relative imperfection: no, this is real evil, testifying to the depravity of his nature.
c) Also unfair is the opinion that has emerged in modern times of those who claim that the source of human evil lies not in the nature of man, but in the shortcomings of his upbringing, that every person is born pure and innocent, as Adam was created, and becomes evil and vicious as a consequence bad upbringing, bad examples, etc. If this were true: then - aa) one cannot help but be surprised how, over the course of too many seven thousand years, constantly working on its education, humanity has not yet learned to preserve the primitive purity and innocence with which everyone is supposedly born; It is not clear why it is a bitter necessity that all people themselves receive and pass on to others precisely this bad upbringing. It is known, on the contrary, that - bb) in modern times, in many educated states, all possible measures have been taken to improve public institutions where youth are educated; the most effective means are used to protect pupils from vices and teach them to virtue - and yet the power of evil does not cease; the attraction to vices apparently prevails in people, as has always been the case, over the attractions to virtue, and often even new crimes appear that were never known before. All this remains an insoluble mystery if we assume that a person is born good, and that during our upbringing we need to worry not about correcting the shortcomings that already exist in us with which we were born, but only about preserving our hereditary innocence. Finally, I must say that - c) although a bad upbringing can really increase evil in us and accelerate its development, just like good upbringing usually weakens the force and can partly suppress it at the very beginning, but evil exists in us even before any education. To be convinced of this, just one simple observation of an infant who has not yet been subjected to the influence of any system of education, and on whom the advantages or disadvantages of the method chosen for the development and direction of his abilities could not yet be reflected. The most superficial observer cannot fail to notice that the infant already clearly reveals dispositions towards anger and pretense, lies, disobedience - not because he saw all these shortcomings in his parents and internalized them through imitation, but because he he is attracted by his innate inclination. The same must be said regarding the influence of bad examples on the corruption of man. If a person is born good, without any predisposition or inclination towards evil, then why does he allow himself to be carried away? bad examples, and doesn’t find enough strength in himself to resist them? Why do bad examples have a stronger effect on us than good ones? Why is it so much easier for us to do evil than to do good? Why do the offspring of evil appear in infants who have not yet achieved self-awareness and cannot imitate others?
d) The most satisfactory solution to reason for all these questions, the most just explanation of the evil that exists in the human race, is offered by divine Revelation when it says that the first man was indeed created good and innocent, but that he sinned before God, and thus damaged his entire nature, and after that, all people descended from him are naturally born with ancestral sin, with a damaged nature and with an inclination towards evil. There is nothing incomprehensible or incredible here. We see from experience that children inherit the illnesses of their parents, and often these illnesses take hold for a long time and pass from generation to generation in well-known families. We know from experience and from simple considerations that “an evil tree cannot produce good fruit” (Matthew 7:18), that from a contaminated source a contaminated stream naturally flows, that when the root of a tree is spoiled, then its trunk cannot remain uncorrupted. . Consequently, humanity, corrupted at its roots, must inevitably appear corrupted in its branches. And if the first man became a sinner and damaged his entire nature, then his descendants cannot help but inherit this same sinful and damaged nature.
consequences of ancestral sin in us
Passing in this way from the ancestors to the entire human race, original sin inevitably transfers with it to us all the consequences that it produced in the ancestors themselves. The most important of these consequences:
1. Darkness of the mind and especially its inability to understand spiritual objects related to the field of faith. “A spiritual man,” says the Apostle, “does not accept the Spirit of God; for he is foolish, and cannot understand; he strives for spiritual things” (1 Cor. 2:14). Therefore, as one of the first blessings, he wishes for newly converted Christians, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him” (Eph. 1:17). But one should not imagine this darkening of the mind in an exaggerated form and think that people, as a result of ancestral sin, have become completely incapable of understanding spiritual things; on the contrary, the same Apostle testifies about the pagans themselves that “the rational things of God (that which can be known about God) are manifest in them,” that “His invisible being, from the creation of the world by the creation of creation, is visible, His essence, and His ever-present power and Divinity,” and that is why they are unrequited: “having not understood God, we have not glorified God” (Rom. 1:19-20). And if fallen man had no ability at all to understand the objects of faith, then it would be impossible to communicate to him the Divine Revelation, which he could neither recognize nor assimilate. This consequence of our ancestral sin was also recognized by the teachers of the Church.
2. The debasement of free will and its inclination more towards evil than towards good. The Holy Apostle depicts in detail this sad state of our active ability when he says: “I know that good things do not live in me, that is, in my flesh; It’s not because I want good that I do it, but because I don’t want evil, I do it. Even if I don’t want to, I do this, it is no longer I who do this, but sin that lives within me. I have now acquired the law, so that I want to do good, as evil is due to me. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man: for I see another law in my heart, warring against the law of my mind, and taking me captive by the law of sin which is in my heart” (Rom. 7:18-23). But on the other hand, it is unfair to claim that the sin of our ancestors completely destroyed freedom in us, so that we cannot even wish for anything good, and our whole nature has become evil (Right. Confess. Part 1, answer to question 27; last Eastern Patriarch, On the Right Faith, Part 14). This thought is contrary to - a) the just quoted words of the Holy Apostle, where it is said that at least “we will have good things”, even if we hate them (Rom. 7:17), and that there is still a remnant of good in us inner man who delights in the law of God. Opposite - b) to all those very many places in which commandments, advice, convictions, promises, threats are spoken to fallen man, such as, for example, the entire Decalogue (Ex. 20:3 et seq.) and all the promises and threats to the people of Israel set out in the last chapters of Deuteronomy (28-32): these passages would have no meaning if a remnant of freedom were not assumed in man. Contrary - c) almost as many places of Scripture, where it is not only assumed, but directly stated, that fallen man has free will and specifically in relation to spiritual life; that he is the master of his actions, and can either obey or resist the will of God. For example: “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and come after Me” (Matthew 16:24); “If you want to take it into your belly, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17); “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor... and come after Me” (21); “If anyone wants to do His will, he understands the teaching that is from God, or I speak from Myself” (John 7:17); “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, having beaten the prophets and stoned those who were sent to you, your fellow children desired as much as their chicks gather kokosh under the wing, and did not desire” (Matthew 23:37); “Whoever stands firm in heart, having no need, but having power according to his own will, and having determined in his heart to guard his virgin, does good” (1 Cor. 7:37). Contrary to - d) the unanimous teaching of the Holy Fathers and teachers of the Church, who, no matter how weak they represented freedom in fallen man, but at the same time argued that ancestral sin did not destroy it in us, and now it is in the will of each of us to choose good or evil, despite all the temptations that surround us, and therefore filled their writings with countless instructions and admonitions to Christians, that they tried on their own, with the help of God’s grace, to fight against sin and succeed in virtue. Finally, it is contrary to - e) the consciousness of every person and the conviction of all peoples. We all feel that we often make a choice from different actions possible for us, and if we decide on one, we decide without any coercion, and of our own free will; that it is up to us to carry out the chosen action one way or another, that we can leave it unfinished and choose another instead, etc. Therefore, all peoples have always had some kind of laws that governed their actions; everyone had an understanding of the difference between good and bad actions, and both of them were imputed to people.
3. Darkening, but not destruction of the image of God. It is inevitable to allow darkness to occur as a result of the darkness of the mind and the corruption of freedom in man. But destruction is impossible, because neither reason nor freedom, with their natural aspirations for the true and good, were destroyed in man from ancestral sin. And the Holy Scriptures, indeed, testify that the image of God remains in us even after the fall. Thus, God Himself, blessing Noah and his sons after the flood, among other things, affirms for him dominion over all animals (Genesis 9:1-2), which, as we have seen, served as one of the essential features of the image of God in man; and further, forbidding the shedding of human blood, he expresses His will in the following words: “Shed the blood of a man, it will be shed in its place: for he created man in the image of God” (6). The teachers of the Church also always admitted the remnants of the image of God in fallen man, and reproached the Origenists for their false teaching, as if ancestral sin had completely blotted out this image in us. And if the image of God, which serves in us as the only basis for union (religion) with God - our Prototype, were completely destroyed in us, then in that case we would be incapable of reunification with Him - and Christianity would have no meaning.
4. Death with all its predecessors: illness and suffering. The Holy Apostle testifies to this when he says: “one man sin came into the world, and death came by sin, and so death came to all men” (Rom. 5:12), and in another place: “before death was man, and resurrection was man.” dead" (1 Cor. 15:21). The ancient teachers of the Church unanimously testify: a) Tatian: “we are not created for death, but we die through ourselves; Our own will destroyed us”; b) Theophilus: “man through disobedience was subjected to illness, sorrow, suffering, and finally fell to death”; c) Basil the Great: “Adam prepared death for himself by moving away from God... so it was not God who created death, but we ourselves brought it upon ourselves by evil decree”; d) Gregory the Theologian: “How many misfortunes I have seen, and misfortunes that were not sweetened by anything; I have not seen a single good that was completely taken away from sorrow, since the destructive taste and envy of the enemy branded me with bitter disgrace"; e) Ambrose: “through the crime of Adam we suffered death” and others.
moral application of dogma
The Lord created man perfect in soul and body, and having created him, he prepared for him the most blessed dwelling on earth, paradise; He Himself contributed to the revelation and strengthening of his spiritual powers, honored him with His direct revelations, dwelt in him with His grace, gave him the tree of life and immortality even in the body, and in order to open before him the field for exploits and merits, He spoke His commandment to him. But man violated God’s commandment, angered his Creator, and lost his primeval glory, became imperfect and corrupt throughout his entire being, and was subjected to illness, disaster, and death. The most striking proof of how dangerous it is to violate the will of God, how pernicious and destructive sin itself is, how terrible it is to fall into the hands of the living God - the just!
The sin of our first parents, with all its consequences, spread to the entire human race, so that we are all conceived and born in lawlessness, weak in soul and body and guilty before God. May this serve for us living as a never-ending lesson in humility and awareness of our own weaknesses and shortcomings, and at the same time may it teach us to ask ourselves for gracious help from the Lord God, and to gratefully use the means of salvation given to us in Christianity.
sources
When writing this article, material was used from the Orthodox Dogmatic Theology of Metropolitan. Makaria (Bulgakov).Footnotes
- Contr. haeres. V, c. 24; cf. c. 23.
- In Genes. homil. XVI. n. 2.
- Homily for Holy Pascha, in “Works of the Holy Fathers” IV, 160.
- De Genes. ad litt. XI, p. 29.
- Accur. Exposition right faith, book II, ch. 30, p. 134. Elsewhere in the same work, St. John of Damascus expresses a guess why the devil chose the serpent as his weapon: “Before the fall,” he says, everything was subject to man; for God has made him ruler over everything that is on the earth and in the waters. Even the serpent was close to man, and even more than other animals approached him, and with his pleasant movements seemed to be talking to him. That is why the devil, the chief of evil, through him inspired the ancestors with the most destructive advice” (Book II, Chapter 10, p. 83).
- Justin. Dialog. cum Tryph. With. 103. 124: Tertull. de patient, c. 5; Origen. in Joann. T. XX, no. 21; Lactant. Instit. divin. 11, 13; Euseb. Praep. Evang. VII, 10; Ambros. de paradise c. 11, no. 9; Greg. Nyss. in Ps. Tract. II, p. 16; Theodoret. Quest. in Genes. XXXI, in Chr. Thurs. 1843, III, 361.
- In Genes. homil. XVI, no. 2. 3. We have given here the thoughts of St. John Chrysostom in abbreviation.
- Saint John Chrysostom represents God as speaking to Adam like this: “What kind of leniency do you deserve, having forgotten My commandment and daring to prefer the gift of a wife to My words? For although the wife was “dade,” My commandment and the fear of punishment were sufficient to keep you from eating. Or did you not know, or did you not know? That is why, caring for you, I predicted that you would not be subjected to this - so that, although your wife set you up to violate the commandment, you are not innocent. You had to have even greater faith in My commandment and take care not only not to taste it yourself, but also to show your wife the greatness of the crime, for you are the head of the wife and she was created for you. But you perverted the order, and not only did you not correct it. but he himself fell along with her.” And then he notes for his part: “Consider the words of the husband: “Woman, even as you gave with me, you gave to me from the tree, and it died” (Gen. 3:12). There is no necessity here, no coercion, but election and freedom: only “dade”, and not forced, not forced” (in Genes. homil. XVII, n. 4. 5).
How can we explain why the original sin committed by Adam and Eve was passed on to their descendants?
Hieromonk Job (Gumerov) answers:
The sin of the ancestors had a profound impact on human nature, which determined the entire subsequent life of mankind, because man created by God wished consciously and freely, instead of the will of God, to establish his own will as the main principle of life. The attempt of created nature to establish itself in its own autonomy grossly distorted the divine creative plan and led to the violation of the divinely established order. The inevitable logical consequence of this was a falling away from the Source of Life. Existence outside of God for human spirit there is death in the direct and precise meaning of the word. Saint Gregory of Nyssa writes that he who is outside of God inevitably remains outside of light, outside of life, outside of incorruption, for all this is concentrated only in God. Moving away from the Creator, a person becomes the property of darkness, corruption and death. According to the same saint, it is impossible for anyone to exist without being in Existing. Any person who sins commits Adam’s fall again and again.
In what way exactly has human nature been damaged as a result of the egoistic desire to establish one’s existence outside of God? First of all, all the gifts and abilities of man have weakened, they have lost the sharpness and strength that the primordial Adam had. The mind, feelings and will have lost their harmonious coherence. The will often manifests itself unreasonably. The mind often turns out to be weak-willed. A person’s feelings rule the mind and make him unable to see the true good of life. This loss of inner harmony in a person who has lost himself single center gravity, is especially harmful in passions, which are malformed skills of satisfying some needs to the detriment of others. Due to the weakening of the spirit, sensual, carnal needs prevailed in man. Therefore St. The Apostle Peter instructs: Beloved! I ask you, as strangers and pilgrims, to abstain from carnal lusts that war against the soul(1 Peter 2:11). This is a revolt of the soul carnal lusts- one of the most tragic manifestations of fallen human nature, the source of most sins and crimes.
We all share in the consequences of original sin because Adam and Eve are our first parents. A father and mother, having given life to a son or daughter, can only give what they have. Adam and Eve could not give us either the primordial nature (they no longer had it) or the regenerated one. According to St. Apostle Paul: From one blood He brought forth the entire human race to live on all the face of the earth.(Acts 17:26). This tribal succession makes us heirs of original sin: Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, [because] all sinned in him(Rom. 5:12). Commenting on the above words supreme apostle, Archbishop Theophan (Bystrov) writes: “This study shows that the holy Apostle clearly distinguishes two points in the doctrine of original sin: parabasis or crime and hamartia or sin. By the first we mean the personal transgression of the will of God by our forefathers in their failure to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; under the second - the law of sinful disorder, which has entered human nature as a consequence of this crime. When we talk about the heredity of original sin, what is meant is not parabasis or the crime of our first parents, for which they alone are responsible, but hamartia, that is, the law of sinful disorder that afflicted human nature due to the fall of our first parents, and “sinned” in 5:12 in such In this case, it must be understood not in the active voice in the sense of “they committed a sin,” but in the middle passive, in the sense of verse 5:19: “they became sinners,” “they turned out to be sinners,” since in Adam she fell human nature. Therefore St. John Chrysostom, the best expert on the authentic apostolic text, found in 5:12 only the thought that “as soon as he [Adam] fell, then through him those who did not eat from the forbidden tree became mortal” (On the Dogma of the Redemption).
The fall of our first parents and the inheritance of spiritual corruption by all generations gives Satan power over man. The sacrament of baptism frees one from this power. “Baptism does not take away our autocracy and self-will. But it gives us freedom from the tyranny of the devil. who cannot rule over us against our will" (Venerable Simeon New Theologian). Before performing the sacrament itself, the priest reads four incantatory prayers over the person being baptized.
Since in the sacrament of baptism a person is cleansed from original sin and dies to a sinful life and is born into a new one life of grace, the Church has established baptism for infants since ancient times. When the grace and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit(Tit. 3, 4-5).
- In your seminar lectures you say that original sin cannot be forgiven. What does it mean?
To start small image, and then an explanation. Here is a man who broke his leg, this, of course, is not good. He says: “It’s my fault that I didn’t listen to good advice and jumped,” but the leg remains broken, it needs to be treated, and not forgive the person.
Let's try to understand what original sin is. There are a few various points view on this issue. Catholic and then Protestant theology understand original sin mainly as the guilt of Adam and Eve for the sin that they committed. Guilt that seems to spread to all of humanity. But this is absurd. The prophet Ezekiel writes: “The son will not bear the guilt of the father, and the father will not bear the guilt of the son.” (Ezek. 18.20). How can the guilt of my great-grandfather pass on to me?
There is another point of view that original sin is damage that arose as a result of the fall of the first people. Reverend Maxim The confessor explains this damage as follows: the first is mortality, we became mortal, and the first people were immortal. The Lord says: “All the good is great”(Genesis 1:31), everything created was beautiful, but I warned: "If you sin, you will surely die" (Genesis 2:17). The first people committed sin and became mortal, and their descendants became mortal. We are not guilty, but it is a pity that we are mortal. We have become susceptible to all diseases, all influences environment. There was a need for sleep, food, clothing, and warmth. Before the Fall, all this was not necessary. This is what the Bible calls “skin,” as it says: “And the Lord God made garments of skins for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” (Genesis 3:21).
This is what original sin is - damage. Man became mortal, perishable, vulnerable. And there is no need for any dogma, we baptized the child and - glory to You, Lord! - he died baptized. That is, with baptism, mortality and pain do not disappear.
Original sin will be healed when we receive a new body after the general resurrection.
This is what “not forgiven” means. Mortality cannot be forgiven. It is not necessary to forgive, but to heal. Healing is impossible in our living conditions; it will happen after the general resurrection.
Unfortunately, the Western idea of guilt has penetrated into our theological textbooks, as if we are to blame for the sin of Adam and Eve. You understand that this is an unreasonable thing.
- Explain the question about the original sin of our Lord Jesus Christ.
By original sin we mean our mortality, perishability - our dependence on surrounding nature and the painful states of hunger, thirst, pain and disease. And also passion - blameless, non-sinful (this is almost synonymous with corruption). By impeccable passions we mean righteous anger, the desire for justice, etc. This is what we acquired as a result of the Fall of Adam. All this is named in Scripture "leather vestments" (Genesis 3:21), that is, “skinned garments” in which the Lord clothed the sinned person - mortality, perishability, passion.
The Lord Jesus in His incarnation accepts our human nature as mortal, corruptible, and not sinfully passionate, but does not sin in this and through suffering, the Cross and death resurrects it in its original state: by death he trampled death.
The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Hebrews says: “God brought about their salvation through suffering.” (Heb. 2:10). Here the word “perfected” in Greek is teliosh, that is, “made perfect.” But He was perfect, He had no sin, although by nature He was similar to us in everything, including mortality. Athanasius the Great says: “Let those who say that the human nature of Christ by nature was immortal be silent” and further, resolving the question “If He had not been crucified, would He have died or not?”, he says: “The mortal nature of Christ could not help but die.”
There are many statements by the Holy Fathers on this question, and they all boil down to the fact that the Lord did not accomplish the feat of salvation and healing of human nature in the Incarnation, otherwise the Cross would not have been needed. This was the greatest humility of God (in Greek kenosis - “depreciation of oneself”), that He, the Almighty, united with mortal human nature without sinning in it. And according to the teaching of the Church, it was through death that He trampled death. He accepted true death, not imaginary. Rev. John of Damascus directly condemns the heretics under the name of autotodocetes, who taught that Christ assumed an immortal nature, but voluntarily took upon himself death; took on a dispassionate nature, but voluntarily took on the passions. Pope Honorius, who was condemned by the Church as a Monothelite, also argued that Christ took on the nature of the first Adam.
The Church clearly formulated its teachings, these heresies were condemned. The Holy Fathers spoke a lot about this. And suddenly, in our time, the autodocets again raise their heads, as if Christ healed human nature already in His incarnation. But why then was the Cross needed? No wonder the Apostle Paul wrote: “But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks.” (1 Cor. 1:23). They are trying to remove the Crucifix again - this temptation and this madness. No! Salvation was accomplished not in the Incarnation, but on the Cross. “God made the leader of salvation perfect” (Heb. 2:10), that is, he freed him from death, made him perfect through suffering. Therefore, when we talk about original sin in Christ, I understand how it frightens many, because all of our school theological literature is filled with Catholic teaching about original sin, which is God’s curse that extends to the entire human race. And it’s as if that’s why Christ was born without original sin and appeared as a sacrifice so that the curse would be lifted. That is, he made a sacrifice to the Father. Saint Gregory the Theologian answers this like this: “I ask, to whom was the sacrifice made? If to the devil, then how humiliating it is for the Creator to make a sacrifice to His fallen creature. And if the Father, then does the Father love man less than the Son? Why did He need such a sacrifice? “It was necessary for man to be sanctified by God’s humanity.”
That is, the sacrifice was made for you and me, why should we be endlessly grateful to Him. It’s the same as if we were drowning and someone, sacrificing themselves, saves us. This is what the Lord did - by His death he trampled death, and from here the greatest gratitude to Christ is born.
- How did Adam differ from Christ?
A lot of people. Adam did not know what evil was, had no experience of contact either outside himself or inside. Adam did not have “leather garments” - a biblical term, according to Rev. Maximus the Confessor, meaning mortality, corruption and non-sinful passion, that is, dependence on natural conditions, the need for sleep, nutrition and so on.
“Leather garments” were given to Adam after the Fall, when he became mortal, corruptible, and passionate.
Christ, when born, took on our flesh, mortal and perishable. As Athanasius the Great writes: “Let those who say that the body of Christ was immortal by nature be silent!” Christ took our sick, damaged, mortal flesh. Why he truly died and truly rose again. Adam didn't have this.
Christ was surrounded by evil. Adam did not know this, so he fell after the slightest temptation. Christ was constantly tempted and did not fall. This is the greatness of Christ - the “second Adam” in comparison with the first.
- Did Adam know about the Holy Trinity?
I can give methodological advice: whenever a question arises, you need to think: “What will I have if I receive the answer? Why do I need it?" There is an endless sea of questions, but it is impossible and unnecessary to deal with them all. There is also an endless sea of literature, but it is impossible and unnecessary to read everything. Be calm, you will never read everything. We must choose what is useful, what is necessary, what is in demand at the present moment. Of course, judging by my age, I will soon know the answer to your question, but how can I tell you about it?
“For two sins arose in our forefather as a result of the transgression of the divine commandment: one is worthy of censure, and the second, which had the cause of the first, cannot cause censure; the first - from will, which voluntarily renounced the good, the second - from nature, following the will, involuntarily renounced immortality." St. Maximus the Confessor. Works in 2 vols. Questions and answers to Fallasius. Question 42. M.: Martis, 1994. - T .2, p. 129
Paschal troparion.
“Christ took on a body that could die, in order to offer it as His own for everyone, and as for everyone who suffered, because of His presence in the Body, to abolish the possessing power of death, that is, the devil, and to deliver everyone who was guilty of the fear of death in the work (Heb. 2, 14-15)” - St. Athanasius the Great. Creations. M., 1994. T. 3. P. 346
Autotodokets (Aphtartodokets, Gayanites, Imperishable Ghosts, Fantasiasts, Julianists) - a movement in Monophysitism, consisting of followers of the Halicarnassian bishop Julian. It was formed in 519 after the overthrow of the Monophysite hierarchs in the East. Julian's followers taught that the body of Jesus Christ was incorruptible, that he felt hunger, thirst and other physiological sensations either by appearance or by spontaneous desire, and not by nature. At the same time, the god Jesus and the man Jesus had no difference, and therefore Christ had one nature. The Autodocetes were divided into Aktistites, who recognized the body of Christ as uncreated, and Ktisgolarts (Ktistites), who recognized the body of Christ as created. At the IV and V Ecumenical Councils, the teaching of the Autotodocetes was rejected, and they were forced to disperse outside the Eastern Empire.
Honorius, the Pope, was elected in 625, built many magnificent churches, and established the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross in the Western Church. Died in 638. In the dispute about whether Jesus Christ has two or one will, he supported the views of the Patriarch of Constantinople Sergius, for which he was anathematized as a heretic at the Council of Constantinople.
“What remains to be explored is a question and a dogma that is ignored by many, but for me is very much in need of investigation. To whom and for what purpose was this blood shed, shed for us - the great and glorious blood of God and the Bishop and the Sacrifice? We were in the power of the evil one, sold into sin and bought damage for ourselves through voluptuousness. And if the price of redemption is given to no one other than the one in power, I ask: to whom and for what reason was such a price given? If the evil one, then how offensive this is! The robber receives the price of redemption, receives not only from God, but [receives] God himself, for his torment he takes such an immeasurable payment that for it it would have been fair to spare us too! And if to the Father, then, firstly, for what reason is the blood of the Only Begotten pleasing to the Father, Who did not accept Isaac, which was offered by the Father, but replaced the sacrifice, giving a ram instead of a verbal sacrifice? Or from this it is clear that the Father accepts, not because he demanded or had a need, but because of the economy and because man needed to be sanctified by the humanity of God, so that He Himself would deliver us, overcoming the tormentor by force, and raise us to Himself through the Mediating Son and arranging everything in honor of the Father, to whom He appears to be submissive in everything? These are the works of Christ, and let more be honored with silence” - St. Gregory the Theologian. Creations. T. 1. - M., 1994, pp. 676-677.
Original sin represents the violation of God's commandment to obey by the first humans, Adam and Eve. This event led to their exclusion from the state of godlike and immortal. It is considered sinful, entered into human nature and transmitted at the moment of birth from mother to child. Liberation from original sin occurs in the sacrament of Baptism.
A little historyOriginal sin in Christianity occupies a significant part of the teaching, since all the troubles of mankind came from it. There is quite a lot of information that describes all the concepts of this act of the first people.
Fall is the loss of an exalted state, that is, life in God. Adam and Eve had such a state in Paradise, in contact with the highest Good, with God. If Adam had then resisted temptation, he would have become absolutely unyielding to evil and would never have left paradise. Having betrayed his destiny, he forever departed from unity with God and became mortal.
The first type of mortality was the death of the soul, which departed from divine grace. After Jesus Christ saved the human race, we again got the chance to return divinity to our lives full of sin, to do this we just need to fight them.
Atonement for original sin in ancient timesIn the old days, this happened through sacrifice in order to correct the grievances and insults caused to the gods. Often all kinds of animals acted as redeemers, but sometimes they were also people. In Christian teaching, it is generally accepted that human nature is sinful. Although scientists have proven that in Old Testament, namely in the places devoted to the description of the fall of the first people, nowhere is it written about the “original sin” of humanity, nor that it was passed on to subsequent generations of people, nothing about redemption. This suggests that in ancient times all sacrificial rituals had an individual character; they used to atone for their personal sins in this way. That's what it says in everyone scriptures Islam and Judaism.
Christianity, after borrowing many ideas from other traditions, accepted this dogma. Gradually, information about “original sin” and “the redemptive mission of Jesus” became firmly integrated into the teaching, and its denial began to be considered heresy.
What does original sin mean?
The original state of man bore the ideal source of divine bliss. After Adam and Eve sinned in Paradise, they lost their spiritual health and became not only mortal, but also learned what suffering is.
St. Augustine considered the Fall and Redemption to be the two main foundations of Christian doctrine. The first doctrine of salvation was interpreted by the Orthodox Church for a long time.
Its essence was as follows:
Their perfection prevented them from falling into sin on their own, but Satan helped them. It is this neglect of the commandment that is included in the concept of original sin. As a punishment for disobedience, people began to experience hunger, thirst, fatigue,... The guilt is then passed from mother to child at the time of birth. Jesus Christ was born in such a way as to remain free from this sin. However, in order to fulfill his mission on Earth, he accepted its consequences. All this was done in order to die for people and thereby save the next generations from sin.
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